The present invention concerns a novel stenographic keyboard.
Conventional stenographic keyboards, although efficient beyond the predecessor “by-hand” systems of pen-writing, still restrict the speed of the user, as they necessitate multiple strokes to form multi-syllabic words or to add word endings.
With the standard stenographic keyboard layout, the speed required of the user, for instance, in a courtroom setting, is unnecessarily taxing on the joints of the fingers and thumbs.
In addition, the standard keyboard layout is not conducive to writing words ending in vowels, nor does it facilitate writing word endings such as “as, es, os, is, us, ad, ed, od, id, ud” at the same time and in the same stroke used to write the rest of the word.
Many keyboards have been devised to aid in the transcription of words from an oral source into a written document. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,765,764 describes a keyboard which includes horizontal and vertical groupings of keys to characterize consonant and vowel letters appropriately.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,332,527 shows a keyboard which employs a palm-pressed key to produce documents in Braille.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,804,279, 5,017,030, and 6,084,576 describe keyboards which are unconventional in arrangement to more easily access familiar keys in the construction of words.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 323,286, 335,171, 581,570, 2,189,023, 4,655,621, and 5,486,058 describe keyboards which are used to transcribe words having palm pressed keys that have been added and are separately operable from the existing keys on a stenographic keyboard. The palm keys are pressed simultaneously with the individual finger operated keys in many cases.
A word transcription keyboard which is capable of quickly and easily transcribing words from an oral source with employment of the entire hand of the user would be a notable advance in the field of language transcription.